


It's Easy

by writetheniteaway



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: BSS2019, Bellarke Secret Santa, Confessions of love, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Post Season 6, a bit of angst, overall very soft, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writetheniteaway/pseuds/writetheniteaway
Summary: A (very late) Bellarke Secret Santa gift for ChasetheWindTouchtheSky: some soft post Season 6 Bellarke.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 71





	It's Easy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChasetheWindTouchtheSky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChasetheWindTouchtheSky/gifts).



Bellamy was hovering. He spent breakfast within arm’s reach of Clarke, Echo across and diagonal a few seats away. He followed Clarke and Madi back to the cabin they’d taken temporary residence in, refusing to let them carry their supplies on their own. He showed up on their front porch a few minutes before they left for a rendezvous with their leadership and Gabriel, attempting without any great success to appear as if he’d casually thought to swing by and see if Clarke wanted someone to walk with instead of making it clear that he had deliberately planned his path out of the way to be with her.

Clarke knew he was hovering. He was conveniently everywhere she was, spending more time with her and Madi than Echo. It ate at her, she’d been in that place before, a lifetime ago with Raven and Finn, and she was in no hurry to threaten the first semblance of relative peace they’d had since…well, it was relative peace, and she wanted to protect it. And besides that, it was Bellamy, not Finn, and how she felt about him was not nearly the same. She was in love with Finn. Bellamy though, Bellamy was her heart. Always there, at times literally keeping her alive, constant and unwavering.

She couldn’t jeopardize that by being in love with him. It would ruin everything.

*

Clarke and Madi are in the living room of their borrowed cabin, Madi is curled on the couch asleep and Clarke’s busying herself with taking inventory of the medical kit she’d found under the sink. She jumps at the knock on their door, but relaxes again just as quickly when she recognizes it’s Bellamy.

“Can we talk?” He asks nearly as soon as she opens the door.

“What’s wrong?” She asks.

“Does something always have to be wrong?” He asks wryly.

“Fair enough,” She says. “You wanna come in? Madi’s asleep.”

“Sure,” He follows her in the door, which she makes sure to bolt behind them.

“Maybe not where we might wake her up though,” He says, keeping his voice low. Clarke passes him a grateful smile and leads him through the door to the kitchen.

“Grab a chair, I think there’s something edible in here somewhere-“ Clarke’s buzzing around the kitchen. She’s trying to keep busy as much as possible, keep from thinking too much, and it’s so _Clarke_ he could laugh. To spend what should be her time to breathe, to grieve properly, in a whir of constant motion. 

“I’m fine,” He says, trying to get her attention.

“I’ve been trying to take stock, see if we recognize any of the supplies, start saving things that will last in case we need a-“

“Clarke,” He interrupts her planning, and something in his tone makes her stop moving.

“What is it?” She asks, moving to sit across from him.

“I…” He was so certain of it all until she looked at him. She was focused, healing. Maybe this would throw a wrench in her ability to find normal. Maybe it would be selfish to talk about when there was so much uncertainty still in the air. Maybe he should wait.

“You know you can tell me anything,” She reminded him, taking his hand in hers. It was a simple, friendly gesture, but her touch electrified him. She watched him, concerned but not yet anxious, giving him the space to start the conversation on his own terms.

Bellamy took a quick breath and imagined himself diving off a cliff.

“ClarkeIthinkI’minlovewithyou.”

She looked at him incredulously. “What?”

He’d said it once already, even if it was too fast for comprehension, but that fact alone emboldened him.

“I’m in love with you,” He said it softly, closing his hand around hers. She looked at him again and he could see the gears and cogs running in her mind.

“What the hell are you thinking?” She asks him. “What about Echo, what-“  
  


“Alright stop-“ He pulls his hand away, hurt at her reaction. “You’re really something you know that?”

“Bellamy-“

“Forget it,” He stands up from his seat.

“Bellamy!” She says again with more force behind it. “Sit down and talk to me,”

“You clearly don’t want to hear what I have to say,”

“Because it doesn’t make any sense!”

“Why does everything have to make sense? Why can’t you for once in your life just stop thinking long enough to at least hear me out?” He looks at her intently, making sure his point is heard.

“You right,” She concedes. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not like I know how to do this,” He levels with her. “You’re the one who makes the speeches, I just shoot things.”

“Don’t say that,” She sighs.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s not the point.” He hovers awkwardly beside the table.

“Talk to me,” She tries to take his hand again but he pulls it out of her reach. “Bellamy,” She stands and tries to take his hands again, this time he doesn’t pull away. “I’m listening,” She promises. He looks at her for a moment, then slowly brushes a strand of hair from her face.

“Yeah, ok.” He agrees. He glances up and leads her out a back door. There’s a porch with a swinging bench, the highlighted feature of the cabin that had made Madi insist they chose this one. They settle on it, separate but not too far apart.

“Do you want to start from the beginning?” Clarke asks him, only half teasing.

Bellamy holds her hand in between his, running his thumb over her skin in patternless circles.

“I love you,” He says, not daring to look at her. “And I think I have for a long time.” He glances at her and she’s still got hesitation etched on her face. “Echo sent me to come talk to you,” He says, not to complicate things but to maybe put Clarke’s mind at least a little at ease. “I was ignoring it, I thought I could just-pretend. But she’s right. I can’t, and it’s stupid to keep trying.”

“Echo said to tell me you’re in love with me?” Clarke asks, still confused.

“Yeah, she did.” He confirms. “And she’s right,” He adds for emphasis.

“Bellamy-“

“Just let me talk, ” He says, frustrated but not angry. “Let me get it all out before you pick it apart, please?”

Clarke nods in agreement.

“Everything has been so hard, my whole life. Protecting Octavia on the Ark, coming to the ground, leaving the ground, leaving you,” He squeezes her hand tight. “It’s all just been one disaster after another, like we never have a second to breathe. And every time I feel like I can’t do it anymore, you’re there pulling me along. Every time I think I can finally give up, I think of you. And I can’t bring myself not to try harder, because I need one more chance to talk to you because I never told you how I felt.”

His voice breaks for a second. “You lost your Mom because we made a promise to Monty, I lost O because I didn’t want to face her. I can’t keep hoping I’ll get another chance to tell you this Clarke.”

“It’s ok,” She says softly, leaning closer to him. “You are now,”

“All of it, every second was so hard. But when I’m with you, it’s like, it’s like breathing. I don’t even have to think about it, it just feels right.” She watches him, waiting for him to continue. “I never should have left you on the ground,” He says, continuing before she can interrupt him to disagree. “I should never have left you in Sanctum unprotected. I’ve failed you so many times, and you still trust me. You still believe in me,” He cups her cheek in his hand.

“This shouldn’t be hard,” He insists. “This is the one thing that should be so easy. But we keep making it hard, and we can’t do it anymore. There’s not enough time for us to keep hoping for things to settle down. We need to live now, before something ruins it all.”

“Is that everything?” She asks him, but her tone is genuine.

“I love you,” He says again. “And I’ve loved you for over a hundred years and I think you love me too, and I am begging you to trust me that this is the right thing for us. Please,”

Clarke winds her hand to hold his wrist where he cradled her face, keeping their opposite hands laced tight.

“I love you too,” She says quietly. “But I don’t know how to-“

Bellamy kisses her, it’s a passionate rush to have their lips meet but the kiss itself is tender, questioning, and all too brief. He pulls away again as far as he can force himself, and settles to rest his forehead on hers. She vibrates beneath him and for a second he’s terrified that she’s crying, but instead she looks up at him, laughter beaming on her face.

The expression is infectious, and he laughs with her, and suddenly they’re kissing again, joyous exploration into deeply unfamiliar terrain, but a map drawn on an irreplaceable bond to guide the way.

“You’re right,” Clark says against the corner of his mouth. “It should be this easy.”

*

They don’t set out with the intention of hiding anything, but neither do they feel compelled to make some grand announcement of this new development either. After all, there was still the matter of rebuilding Sanctum, starting on the second settlement, figuring out what had happened to Octavia. But it was a relative peace, at least by their track record, and that meant people were paying just a bit more attention to the personal details of each other’s lives.

So when Clarke offers to share the rest of her dinner with Bellamy, Miller thinks nothing of it. But when they share from the same plate, and Bellamy feeds her the last bite straight from his fork, that gives Miller pause. He quirks an eye at the two of them, which makes Clarke blush a deep red, immediately confirming Miller’s suspicions. Bellamy takes stock of Clarke’s obvious embarrassment, and shoots Miller a look imploring him not to make a further scene right then and there.

Miller is subtle, but Jackson surely isn’t. So when Miller whispers to him quietly, his attention automatically snaps to Clarke and Bellamy, and the speed of the gesture draws the gaze of the rest of the table as well.

“Something you wanna share with the class?” Raven asks.

Clarke grips Bellamy’s hand under the table, letting him make the call. Murphy looks at them smugly, Emori curious, and Echo amused.

“Come on you two, spill.” Murphy drawls.

“Alright lay off,” Bellamy says, but his grin betrays them both.

*

They were back on the porch, Madi long asleep for the night. Clarke sat on the steps, leaning against the rail, her hand running calmly through Bellamy’s hair. His head rested on Clarke’s lap, keeping the hand not occupied in his hair steady between his own.

“They named the constellations after the myths,” he tells her. “The maps on the Ark were conversions from the ones on Earth, so a lot of times the pictures didn’t line up the way they would have from the ground.” Clarke quirks a smile at him. “I was working on them, on the ring. Trying to get them right.”

“Madi and I used to play a game, trying to imagine what you all were doing up there,” She says.

Bellamy’s face falls slightly. “I shouldn’t have left you-“

“Shhhh, no.” Clarke insists, moving her hand to cradle his face. “I don’t want to spend any more time looking at all of the mistakes we made.”

Bellamy brings her hand to his lips to place a soft kiss at her wrist. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,”

“Even if it might be about the mistakes?” He says, sitting up suddenly.

“No-“

“And about now, too.” He says, searching her face for permission. Clarke bites her lip, waiting for him to ask.

“Do you think it’s wrong for us to be happy?”

“What?”

“What if we don’t deserve this,” He says, holding tight to her hand, but unable to meet her gaze. “Not after everything we’ve-everyone we’ve lost…”

“Look at me,” Clarke says, soft but with unmistakable intensity. Bellamy meets her eye hesitantly, afraid of what he might he reflected back at him.

“This is what makes the price of doing better bearable,” She insists. “Because now, maybe for the first time, we have a chance to build something.”

“That’s not-“

“I’m not talking about Sanctum, Bellamy. I’m talking about us.” Clarke kisses him, strong and sure. Bellamy breaks it first, resting his forehead on hers. “We keep doing better, and we do it together. Alright?”

Bellamy nods, but something in his stance keeps Clarke unconvinced. She kisses him again, this time with fire behind it. She pulls away first this time, but only just far enough to be able to murmur against his cheek. “It’s easy,” She reminds him, and that makes him grin.

“I love you,” He says, relishing in his new found freedom to say it out loud.

Clarke kisses his temple before winding herself into his arms. “I love you too.”


End file.
